Original title
Hallelujah!
Released
6/3/1981
Origin country
GB
Genre
Comedy
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
2
Number of episodes
15
Hallelujah! was a British sitcom made by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network and was broadcast from April 1983 to December 1984. The series was set in a Salvation Army citadel in the fictional Yorkshire town of Brigthorpe during series 1. Captain Emily Ridley has been posted there, having been an active member of the Salvation Army for 42 years. Despite the town and residents being seemingly pleasant, Emily is determined to flush out sin from behind the net curtains. Assisting Emily are her niece Alice Meredith. The programme was a repeat collaboration between Hird and the creator Dick Sharples, having worked together on the comedy series In Loving Memory between 1979 and 1986. The show even featured guest appearances from guest stars like Hird's Last of the Summer Wine co-star actor Michael Aldridge and television presenter & Countdown Legend Richard Whiteley Himself.
For 42 years, Emily Ridley has fought a tireless battle against the Devil and his works. Now, it seems her uncompromising brand of evangelism has fallen out of favour.
Emily believes that Brigthorpe is teeming with unrepentant sinners. Persuading them to turn their backs on the Devil is proving more difficult than she imagined.
Emily's first counselling session confirms her very worst fears: behind the net curtains of the pleasant little town is a snake pit of original sin!
Emily's latest door-to-door collection for the poor yields little more than £1.20, two 'drop dead's and an improper suggestion. Then she opens the poor box...
Emily's new Senior Citizens' Luncheon Club gets off to a flying start - with an even more interesting finish.
Emily takes delivery of a new mobile canteen, but attempts to offer tea, sympathy and a bowl of soup to the poor and needy don't work out quite as she intended, especially when a ham sandwich causes an embarrassing fall at Yorkshire Television that makes the protestor a hero!
With Emily in hospital, struck down by a renegade ham sandwich, Sisters Alice Meredith and Dorothy Smith are left to run the Citadel. Their approach is quite unlike Emily's!
Captain Emily Ridley receives her marching orders to take up a new posting, but to where? To another northern Sodom or Gomorrah - or to the Salvation Army home for old soldiers?
Emily puts the Sally Army's reputation at stake when she agrees to compete in a musical festival - without a band, singers, or even a comb and paper!
Despite weeks of fighting the good fight, Emily still hasn't saved a single soul. Then she hits the jackpot of original sin.
Emily is convinced she is about to get her longawaited promotion, but what she actually gets is something rather different.
Accused of running her citadel like a house of ill repute, Captain Emily Ridley's Sally Army career seems to be almost over...
Songster, Alice Meredith tries to save a middle-aged dropout from himself, but is Brother Gibson quite what he appears?
The secrets of Captain Emily Ridley's private life are about to be revealed...
Captain Ridley attempts to explain to a group of children what Christmas used to be like, using as illustration the tale of Ebenezer Dickinson - an old miser whose only enjoyment is making other people's lives a misery.
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